barefootliam

A curly-haired Italian boy comforts his younger sister, “Don’t Cry” in this French painting from 1878.

The engraving was made by Paul Adolphe Rajon, himself a painter and printmaker, after the oil painting by Léon Bonnat.

#portrait #children #poverty #grief #sad #costumes #fobo #victorianArt

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/Cassell-MagazineOfArt/pages/000-frontispiece/

Jul 5, 2025 at 4:08amWeb
Show threadJon BosakJul 5, 2025
@barefootliam Jeez. You'd think that painters/engravers with academic training would know that children's heads don't grow that much between those two ages. She looks more like a doll than a child.
Show threadbarefootliamJul 6, 2025

@bosak i didn't find the original oil paintong online (admittedly i didn't look very hard) so i don't know if it's the engraver or the artist -or quite possibly the publisher looking at a draft and saying, make the girl’s head smaller!

The autobiography of the engravers the Dalziel brothers (most famous for rendering the Tenniel Alice drawings) certainly mentions having to work with such publishers!